Faraday Cafe In Vancouver Blocks Wireless Signals

The Faraday Café is a pop-up café conjured up by social artist Julien Thomas and Hughes Condon Marler Architects.

Set to open on Thursday at The Chinatown Experiment (a storefront designed to house pop-up projects), the Faraday Café repels wireless signals. This means your phone won't be able to get a signal, and your laptops and tablets won't connect to the Internet.

“There is a whole generation of people in this country that don’t remember what life was like before Facebook,” Thomas told The Province. “I think people are looking for opportunities to opt out and leave their phones behind.”

The café's walls are lined with aluminum window mesh that shields electromagnetic signals, said The Chinatown Experiment. But initial testing revealed that small folds and gaps were letting Internet signals seep in, so they built a large box in the centre of the space that is truly WiFi-free, reports The Province.

The project's name is inspired by the Faraday cage, which is "made of conductive material and it is a complete enclosure that restricts the passage of electrical field," Thomas told The Chinatown Experiment.

The café will serve a rotation of coffees by donation, including beans from Victoria roasters, Bows & Arrows. The space will also host events such as pop-up dinner parties (so meta), afternoon DJ sets, and storytelling nights.